Getting There
by Anna Nigma
Summary: Getting there is half the fun. Which is a good thing because with these two it could take a while. Azuma/Kahoko in fifty prompts. Rated for safety.


**Disclaimer: The two months of piano lessons I took in the fifth grade are about as close as I will ever get to owning La Corda d'Oro. **

**A/N: Okay this stated out as one of those 50sentence deals but rapidly became something that was more like 50prompts instead. I couldn't contain myself but I hope they're enjoyable enough to make up for it. **

_**If love is the answer could you rephrase the question?**_

**Lily Tomlin**

**Motion**

One of the first things he _really _notices about her is that she never sits still. He catches himself before he can label it cute and decides that it's the most annoying thing he's ever been subjected to.

**Cool**

She wasn't cool by any stretch of the imagination. She was easily flustered, naïve, and clumsy but that was exactly what made teasing her so much fun.

**Young**

Some days it's hard to remember that she's only a year younger than him and he finds the childlike joy she gets from music alternately annoying and endearing.

**Last**

She is the last person he speaks to before he "leaves" for England. That he dodges interaction with everyone else for the rest of the day to keep it that way means nothing. He just didn't want to talk to any of them.

**Wrong**

The first time he ever saw her the only word that came to mind was boring. Later he would be both annoyed and pleased to find that he was entirely wrong.

**Gentle**

She handles her violin as gently as most people would a baby and he thinks it's the stupidest thing he's ever seen, it's not as if it can tell how she treats it. He's not jealous of course and the rebellious part of his brain that always insists on reminding him that no one has ever treated him with such tenderness is obviously the product of spending too much time with Hihara.

**One**

Despite what his constant acting suggested Azuma cared very little for the opinions of other people. So when he finally found himself occupying the enviable position of Hino Kahoko's boyfriend he knew that the cries of outrage from his family would be easily ignored, as would the moans of despair from his legions of devoted fans. There was only one person (besides Kahoko and himself) whose opinion mattered now.

"Hihara, I need to discuss something with you."

**Thousand**

While he had received thousands of love confessions over the years he himself had never confessed to anyone and he found himself at quite a loss as to how to go about it. He couldn't even use the confessions he'd received as examples of how to confess successfully because none of those girls had succeeded. He, on the other hand, had no intention of being rejected.

**King**

"King me."

He had always known that marrying her was the right decision. Watching her beat his highly esteemed and widely respected grandfather at checkers six times in row in less than 45 minutes only cemented his certainty.

**Learn**

Over the years they would spend together he would teach her many things: which fork to use, the names of all his favorite artists and their most famous works, and Italian to name a few. She would teach him only two: how to care for someone else more than himself and how to make Jell-O without burning their house down.

**Blur**

In later years if he wasn't focusing especially hard his memories of the concours would be reduced to a blur of soft red hair, wide honey colored eyes, and the sound Ave Maria.

**Wait**

His first week in college drags by. The knowledge that he will no longer be able to see her nearly every day turns hours into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. The year, he is sure, will fell like a lifetime.

**Change**

Kahoko's inability to be anything other than herself was, in his opinion, one her best qualities. So he wasn't at all worried when his grandmother, after finally accepting that Kahoko was there to stay, insisted on "etiquette lessons". It was nice to know that no matter how hard his family might try she would never turn into one of those high society monsters they'd wanted him to marry.

**Command**

By the time he was a third year in high school Yunoki Azuma was very used to getting his way. Kahoko, although she didn't know it, was the first person other than his grandmother to look him in the eye and tell him no.

**Hold**

It would be easy to hold her down, to pin her smaller body beneath his and take what he wants, it's not like he's never done it before. The only problem is he no longer wants to use force, wants her to want it as much as he does.

He chooses to believe that he has gotten lazy rather than admit that he has fallen in love.

**Need**

There were very few things in life that Yunoki Azuma needed. He wanted a great deal and he was in the habit of getting it, but need left a person open and vulnerable in a way he found distinctly distasteful. He kept the list of things he could not live without short: food, water, and Kahoko. Everything else was just a bonus.

**Vision**

Five minutes after the first time he ever thinks she's beautiful he's on his cell phone making an appointment with his optometrist, it's been a while since he's had an exam.

**Attention**

She never seems to realize that he pays more attention to her every day than most of his classmates have received in the entire three years they've known him.

**Soul**

"You're heartless."

"Only because you've stolen it."

"Soulless then."

"You've got that too."

Then he's kissing her and Kahoko despairs of ever winning an argument against him because not only does he have an answer for everything but they're usually _good _answers too and she just can't win but as long as he keeps saying things like that and meaning them she doesn't really mind.

**Picture**

Every year the student council at Seisou puts out a collection of photographs for the graduating seniors depicting their time at the school. The year he graduates a small picture of the two of them appears as part of a larger collage of random shots. It is the only place they appear together. It is also the only picture in which his smile is completely genuine.

**Fool**

He knows he could fool her just as easily as he fools everyone else. What surprises him is that he doesn't want to.

**Mad**

The first time she was ever truly angry with him was the first time he ever apologized and truly meant it.

**Child**

"What if it doesn't like me?"

"Then it has sense."

She really had been spending too much time with him he decided; three years of uninterrupted marriage had obviously corrupted her.

**Now**

All appearances aside Yunoki Azuma was not a patient person. When he wanted something he got it and that was simply the end of it. So it seemed like some sort of sick cosmic justice that his girlfriend derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from making wait.

**Shadow**

Having grown up in the shadows cast by his older brothers he finds Kahoko's disinterest in both of them outside of polite interaction particularly gratifying.

**Goodbye**

He never says goodbye. She realizes that he never plans to shortly after a car accident that left her in the hospital for two weeks when he demands that he be allowed to die first.

**Hide**

He knows that although she occasionally gets frustrated with his game of emotional hide-and-seek she realizes just how large of a concession it is for him to allow her to play in the first place.

**Fortune**

He knows for a fact that she is not out for his inheritance simply because she is always so uncomfortable with expensive material gifts. It's why he buys her so many of them.

**Safe**

Kahoko's propensity for getting into trouble is a constant, if unvoiced, source of worry among her friends and they all go to great lengths to ensure that she is never left to her own devices for too long. He, however, is the only one with the means to keep her truly safe. The moment he realizes his feelings for her aren't going to go away he assigns her a five-man security detail. She has no idea and spends a great deal of time attempting to figure out how he always seems to know where she is.

**Ghost**

He has never told her this but it's impossible for him to sleep in their home without her. The ghost of her presence never quite fades and instead of finding it reassuring it only serves to remind him that she isn't there.

**Book**

It takes him three months to find out enough about her to fill a book. It takes her six months (and countless half truths and great deal of misdirection) to figure out what his favorite color is.

**Eye**

He knows he's screwed after the third time he mentally compares the color of her eyes to something edible.

**Sing**

She has always found it terribly funny that despite all of his other accomplishments he gets so worked up about the fact that he cannot carry a tune in a bucket.

**Sudden**

There was nothing sudden about his feelings for her. They appeared so gradually that he didn't even notice the chaos penetrating his normally ordered thoughts. By the time he realized what had happened it was too late to stop it despite a great deal of effort on his part.

**Stop**

He teases her more often than he used to but she no longer leaves in tears. She has learned that he won't actually hurt her and he has learned when to stop.

**Never**

Kahoko is a morning person. He on the other hand, never, ever wakes up before seven o'clock in the morning unless it is vitally important.

**Time**

On those rare occasions when his work takes him away from her he goes to ridiculous lengths to ensure that he is the first person she talks to every day, even if it means waking up before seven o'clock in the morning.

**Wash**

He spends the first three months of their marriage trying to convince her that _she _doesn't have to clean _anything_ because they have staff whose job it is to do that. His arguments fall on deaf ears and eventually he decides that the only thing left for him to do is buy her a maid outfit and enjoy the view.

**Torn**

When they are alone he is always torn between the two sides of his personality and eventually he is forced to decide on being someone in between. He spends years believing that it is just another persona before realizing that somewhere along the way she tricked him into being himself.

**History**

They'd met once when they were children and thankfully neither of them remembered it. He'd teased her about her hair color and she'd gotten so upset that she'd thrown the ice cream cone she was holding at his head.

**Power**

Azuma knew for a fact that when Kahoko was younger she was afraid of the dark. He also knew that while she was no longer as strongly affected by it as she had been when she was a child the dark still made her uncomfortable. What_ she_ didn't know was that the power outage that occurred when they were practicing late for an upcoming duet was definitely not an accident.

**Bother**

It doesn't worry him that there are several other men competing for her attention, they're more of a bother than a real threat anyway and if worst comes to worst he knows people who can have them thrown out of the country within hours of his request.

**God**

For as long as he could remember his grandmother had been like a god in his life, moving him about to suit herself without a thought to what he might want. When she ordered him to stop spending time with Kahoko he knew that it was time to become an atheist.

**Wall**

The only one of Kahoko's habits that _really _bothered Azuma was her unusual fondness for walking on top of walls. It wouldn't have been so bad if she were at all coordinated, as it was, the way she wobbled precariously put even his nerves of steel to the test.

**Naked**

The first time he sees her naked it's a complete accident. He is subjected three weeks of silent treatment before he manages convince her that, no it was not the end result of one of his plots though he is willing to concede that it would have been a cause worthy of his superior skills.

**Drive**

The war between his disdain for doing anything that he considered menial and his desire for a greater degree of privacy with Kahoko during one of the few times he was guaranteed that there would be no annoying interruptions (or at least none that couldn't be run down and then passed off as an accident) had been almost pathetically short.

**Harm**

Before now Azuma had always preferred to cause his victims mental anguish. So his sudden desire to cause Tsuchiura physical harm for being constantly close to Kahoko was only negated by the knowledge that he would stand almost no chance against the other boy in a physical confrontation.

**Precious**

During her third visit to his house Kahoko tripped and knocked over a priceless vase that had been in his family for several generations. She had no idea how telling it was that out of the two he did not even think before reaching out to catch her.

**Hunger**

It wasn't as if he had never wanted anything before, because he had. It was just he had never wanted something quite this much before or wanted it for so long or continued wanting it even after it (she) was already his.

**Believe**

Out of everyone he knew Kahoko was the only one he never lied to. Not because she could tell when he did but because she always believed everything he said. Even when she hadn't liked him she had trusted him and it would be pathetic if he lost that now that she finally loved him.

**A/N: My first La Corda D'Oro fic. Yay! I hope no one seems too OOC but writing romance with Yunoki is kind of hard. **

**Reviews, especially ones with constructive criticism, are much appreciated and adored. ******


End file.
